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Although they are not truly indigenous, I choose to keep a Gullah secret for my project. The Gullah are not native to the United States. Rather, they are a distinctive group of African-Americans that were brought to the southeastern United States as slaves. Today, the Gullah live mainly in small farming and fishing communities along the southeastern Atlantic coast and on a chain of Sea Islands that runs parallel to the coast. Although many Gullah families have moved to cities, like New York and Chicago, over time, they still send their children “home” to stay with their grandparents during the summers. Also, many Gullah return to the South Carolina “low country” when they retire.
The Gullah are famous for their creole language, which is similar to Sierra Leone Krio. The Gullah often give their children African names and tell African folktales. Many of these tales are included in the Uncle Remus stories many Americans learn as children. The Gullah also make African-style handicrafts, such as baskets, and eat a unique cuisine based on rice.
Indeed, rice may well be the key to the “secret.” It is the reason the Gullah were brought to the South Carolina low country. For the most part, the early South Carolina planters did not know how to grow rice and their early experiments with rice cultivation were mostly failures. This is why most South Carolina plantation owners specifically sought slaves that came from the traditional rice-growing regions of West Africa. They were also willing to pay higher prices for slaves from the "Rice Coast, the Gambia, and Sierra-Leon, because these slaves knew about cultivating rice.
The South Carolina planters slowly adopted a system of rice cultivation that drew heavily on the labor patterns and technical knowledge of the Gullah. For example, the slaves probably brought the system of sluices, banks, and ditches used on rice plantations from Africa. The workers would also move through the fields in long lines, hoeing rhythmically and singing work songs to keep themselves in absolute unison.
At harvest time, the Gullah women would process the rice by pounding it in large wooden mortars and pestles and then "fanning" it in winnowing baskets to separate the grain from the chaff. Over time, the South Carolina planters sort of industrialized this process by building winnowing “houses” or barns that served the same function on a larger scale. The Gullah make baskets out or palm leaves, sweet gra**** or sometimes a combination of the two.
While many tourists like to buy sweet grass and palm baskets at the French market in downtown Charleston today, few of them probably know how these baskets became so popular, or why they are important. That’s our secret…
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